Relationship between water quality and investment made into phosphorus reduction, Thames River watershed, Ontario

The purpose of this research is to better understand which beneficial management and water management practices are feasible and make good business sense for decision makers. This study has two main questions: (1) What soil and water management practices can grain farmers use to improve productivity by optimising the use of available moisture? (2) How feasible (financially, technically, etc.) are these practices in today’s farming environment? This dataset will facilitate improved understanding of the relationship of investment made into Thames River watershed phosphorus reduction and water quality of the river. Specifically, this data set will provide information on the number of investments made since the 1970s and dynamics of change in phosphorus loads. This data set is collected to support the project titled "Agricultural Water Futures in Canada: Stressors and Solutions – Work package 3". Agriculture Water Futures is a Pillar 3 project under the Global Water Futures Program funded by Canada First Research Excellence Fund

The primary focus of this research is to determine the effectiveness of investments made into the watershed, based on the achieved phosphorus loads reductions. Daily discharges were retrieved from the Hydrometric Data (HYDAT) database, provided by the Water Survey of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada (WSC-ECCC). The Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MOECP) provided the Provincial Water Quality Monitoring Network (PWQMN) data. Census data for population and livestock were obtained from Statistics Canada in periods of 10 years. A systematic review of the environmental programs’ archive was conducted — the origins of the archive website dates back to 1995. This archive is created and maintained by Bruce Bowman, creator of the Canada-Ontario Agriculture Green Plan website (http://agrienvarchive.ca/gp/gphompag.html). This archive includes fifteen major environmental programs related to the reduction of pollution in the Great Lakes Basin in the period 1970 - 2000. There are a total of 1044 available documents in the archive, and contains material from technical to project financial reports and summary analyses. Loadings are calculated on a yearly basis (i.e., from January 1 through December 31 of the current year). Phosphorus loadings from the non-point sources were generated in the watershed, and is estimated using fertilizer consumption, livestock production, and population count in each census area for each census year in the Thames River Watershed. Loading rate (mass per time) is estimated as the product of a concentration (mass per unit volume) and a flow rate (volume per unit time).

Brouwer, R., and Frank, A. (2019). Relationship between water quality and investment made into phosphorus reduction, Thames River watershed, Ontario. Waterloo, Canada: Canadian Cryospheric Information Network (CCIN). Unpublished Data.

https://www.polardata.ca/pdcsearch/PDCSearchDOI.jsp?doi_id=13025